by Kit Rocha
Oh, she'd anticipated that Fleming probably had a honey hole somewhere that he lent to Woods when the man needed a place to lay low, get high, and abuse some women, but she'd never dreamed he'd let Woods do it in his house. And yet that was exactly where the driver stopped, outside the stately white mansion Fleming had spent years--and a fortune--building.
Lex adjusted the wide bracelets covering her cuffs and clenched her hands in the frilly lace of her short skirt. "You get that Mac Fleming knows my face, right?"
"He's never here when Woods is," Jade replied, staring out the window. Her own hands rested in her lap, clamped together so tightly that her knuckles stood out, pale and sharp. Her ashen face and strained eyes could have been nerves, but Lex had seen people on the edge of withdrawal before.
The woman was about to freak out.
Lex swatted her arm. "Hey, keep it together. What about Fleming's guards? Anyone he might have taken to the summit in Sector Two?"
"No, just Finn," she said after a moment, shaking her head. Her thumb brushed compulsively over the inside of her wrist. "He's the guard who brings the drugs. No one's allowed to handle them but him." She finally looked at Lex with a wan smile. "It used to just be me and Woods in the house for the night, once Finn left. Now he brings guards. A lot of them. He's terrified of Dallas O'Kane."
"He should be." After all, Dallas wanted him dead badly enough to make deals with the devil.
Through the divider, Lex heard the driver's door open and close again. Jade took a deep breath. "Finn won't come in right away. Gareth likes to watch me deal with the withdrawal symptoms. The timing is quite precise. I suppose I'd be impressed with Mac Fleming under other circumstances."
The back door opened, and they climbed out. Jade wobbled a little, and Lex steadied her. "Just do everything you're supposed to do. I'll work it out."
"Remember to smile," Jade replied as the driver took her other arm with a gentleness that spoke of loyalty. The old man had given Lex one long, searching inspection when they stopped to pick her up, but hadn't spoken a word then or since.
Two bulky guards in uniforms so cleanly pressed they screamed Eden moved aside as they made their way up the steps. More guards leapt to open the main doors. They performed their job in efficient silence, keeping their hands and gazes to themselves.
And then there he was.
Lex had only seen pictures. She'd looked him up herself, but she'd also stumbled across papers Dallas had left lying around, files still open on his tablets. Gareth Woods, polished and urbane. A cultured, bloodthirsty monster.
His gaze flicked over her, appreciative but dismissive, and the intent stare he turned on Jade warped the very concept of affection. When he stepped forward to sink his fingers into her hair, it made a mockery of the caress Lex had seen a thousand times. This was ownership, stripped of any choice or chance of escape.
He tightened his fingers and wrenched Jade's head back, lifting his other hand to her cheek. "You brought a friend for me. What a sweet girl you are. A sweet, thoughtful girl."
As tense as Jade had been in the car, she was serene now. And she was good, steel nerves beneath a honeyed smile as she played her game. "I'm your rose, sir. But she's something special. Something most men will never taste."
Gareth glanced at Lex again, his eyes heavy with speculation and dark lust. "And what's that?"
"A rose with thorns."
The whispered words hung in the air like a tantalizing challenge. Gareth released Jade and slowly turned. "Is that what you are?"
"Barely." Lex lifted her hair and tilted her head to bare the back of her neck--and the tiny, ancient scar that nestled there, a legacy of Cerys's training. "If you have thorns, they burn them off."
He touched the scar, lingering with a chilling reverence that only got creepier when he lifted his thumb to his lips and licked it. "Jade is such a lovely girl. She struggles at first, but she pants for it before it's over. Do you struggle? Or is the prick of your thorns more subtle?"
Lex kept her gaze fixed on the far wall. "You'll have to find out."
He laughed, delighted, and dragged Jade to his side for a quick, rough kiss that she endured placidly. "You bring me the best gifts," Gareth crooned. "You deserve a reward. Would you like that?"
Jade's breathing hitched, and the sudden raw scratch in her voice wasn't an act. Full of desperation and self-loathing, deep enough to fill an ocean. "Please."
Woods released her so abruptly she stumbled and shook his head with a chiding sound. "That's not how you ask."
Shuddering, Jade folded her knees and sank to the floor. Her hands trembled until she laced them together, pressing them to her stomach. "Please, Gareth. Give me relief from this pain."
"Fine." He nudged her leg with his shoe. "Scoot to the door and call for Finn. I'll be getting to know our new friend."
Jade started to rise, but he moved fast, planting his foot in the small of her back and driving her roughly to the floor. "Crawl."
Woods was at the wrong angle to see it, but Lex caught the searing hatred in Jade's eyes, the fury that would have burned him alive if thoughts were weapons. She lifted her gaze, just for a moment, and Lex could almost hear the words, as if they'd been spoken out loud.
End him.
And then Jade crawled.
Lex searched the room behind Woods's back. Any sort of blade, even something heavy she could use to knock him out until she could crack his worthless neck--but there was nothing she could lay hands on without alerting him.
And she was running out of time. When Fleming's bodyguard showed up, the odds would tilt, and not in her favor.
She drifted toward the line of vintage pipes and pre-Flare drug paraphernalia on display behind the table. "I've never taken any of the stuff Jade is on. Is it good?"
His interest sharpened as he watched her, but his smile was so damn smug she wanted to punch it off his face. "She's crawling, isn't she?"
"I know she thinks it's good." Lex turned and eased up to sit on the table. "I'm asking about you. That's what I'm interested in."
His brow knotted slightly, and he slipped his hand into his jacket. "I could buy you a dozen times for what Finn's about to give her. She's earned it by being good." He withdrew a tiny plastic bottle that rattled when he shook it. "But these. Slip one under your tongue, and you'll forget all about your thorns."
"I don't want to forget them." She leaned back, bracing her arms behind her, and her fingers brushed the long stem of a pipe. "They make me interesting."
Irritation flashed in his eyes. "A modest struggle to protect one's virtue is charming. Disobedience isn't. If you want a chance at the rewards Jade enjoys, show yourself her equal by following her example. A decent girl kneels to her superiors."
Oh, hell no. "Did you know that men with no patience for conversation tend to fuck the same way?" Lex closed her hand around the pipe, which wasn't a pipe at all, but a heavy length of blown glass. "And that's not nearly as fun as it sounds."
His face turned red as he took a threatening step forward. Over his shoulder, Lex saw Jade braced against the door, her eyes closed and her face drawn. No one would interrupt this moment.
Not if she moved fast.
Woods made the decision for her. He raised one arm to strike her, and Lex swung the length of glass around--a fucking bong, of all things. It hit his shoulder and shattered.
Roaring, he flung a hand up to his face. Blood trickled from between his fingers and another cut marred his forehead. "You bitch!" he bellowed.
But not at her.
The door rattled as Woods whirled and lunged toward Jade, who was struggling to drag herself to shaking knees as her patron barreled toward her, damn near frothing at the mouth. "You traitorous, treacherous whore--"
Footsteps thudded in the hall, heavy and quick. The world narrowed to the cool glass in Lex's hand, the warm blood trickling down her wrist, and slowed to a crawl. By the time she slid off the table, Woods had his hands around Jade's throat.
Lex had trained for this. Every week at Orchid House had brought a new trainer, a new situation. A new way to kill. It would make sense to hear Cerys guiding her. Instructing her.
But the words that drifted through her mind now belonged to Dallas. Throat. It's soft, lots of bleeders, and you don't have to do much damage to straight-up kill a motherfucker.
The anatomy lessons at Orchid House did the rest. She reached around and grabbed his upper arm, but he didn't even seem to notice. All his attention was on Jade, on her red face and bulging eyes. On ending her life.
Lex stabbed the broken glass into the right front side of his throat, thrusting it home with all her strength. The wicked shards dug deep into his flesh, and she dragged her makeshift weapon back toward her, slicing through the large blood vessels in his neck.
He released Jade, backhanding Lex as he flailed. She stumbled back, fell, and then he was on her, snarling and wild-eyed as blood gushed from his throat.
He wedged his forearm across her throat and leaned on it--hard. Lex sputtered and pushed back, but her feet slipped on the blood-soaked tile. Woods outweighed her by a good sixty pounds, and without any leverage, she couldn't shove him off. But she could outlast him, maybe.
Hold on, Lex. Just fucking hold on.
Jade wept, her back against the door as the blood pulsing from Woods's jagged, gaping wound began to slow and his skin went pallid, gray. He was cursing, the words coming slower and slower, like a battery-powered toy losing its charge. He slumped, the pressure from his arm intensifying.
Dead weight.
With growing horror, Lex bucked and tried to roll, but she couldn't budge him. This is it, she thought vaguely. This is where I die. The world was already fuzzy, bright white but darkening by the second, and she was tired, so tired...
One more mighty shove and she flung him off her, gasping for breath. Jade screamed as something hit the wall. Lex struggled to sit, only to find herself staring down the muzzle of a pistol.
It was Fleming's bodyguard--the one Jade had called Finn--who stared back, his dark eyes unreadable.
"Lady, you just fucked up my night."
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gareth Woods really was well and truly terrified.
From the trees at the edge of the property, Dallas watched the house through a pair of zoom lenses and listened to Bren's report. "Looks like Fleming cleared out pretty good. Most of the guards left seem to have come with Woods. Cruz and I can go in, work together, kill the ones from Eden, neutralize the ones from Five."
Maybe not the most satisfying approach, but Fleming wouldn't appreciate having his guards murdered, and Woods was less likely to slip through Dallas's fingers if his guards died quick, silent deaths. "Anyone from Two?"
"One driver. No guards."
And no sign of Cerys. Hard to say if that was good or bad, but it did simplify things. "Take Cruz and get as many as you can out of the way without being seen."
"Got it." Bren dropped his rifle, checked the pistols in his holsters, and drew a knife from his boot. "Give us a lead. Two, three minutes."
Dallas watched the two men disappear, following them with his gaze as he spoke to Jasper. "You ready to put this bastard down?" Easier to ask the question without having to look the man in the eyes. Something fragile had almost snapped between them, something that had been strained for a while. Jasper was a man of divided loyalties now, and the person who held his heart might cheerfully sink a knife into Dallas's.
"Would've thought you'd be more excited." Jas knelt beside him and lifted his own binoculars. "This is what you wanted, right? Gareth Woods's blood?"
"Sure it is." It had been his obsession for damn near a month, but he'd hardly thought about it from the moment he'd wrapped that collar around Lex's throat. Hell, he hadn't even worked up half the excitement he should have over getting his hands on Three. Sending Bren to do recon, recruiting new members when a little extra legwork could have resulted in more money...
Lazy. He'd been lazy, because he wanted to keep his ass in bed, preferably with Lex under him. Or riding him.
If he hadn't been so hot to blow a hole in Woods's brain, Lex might be under him right now. So he had to make this the highlight of his goddamn year.
A branch snapped behind them. Jasper spun, already drawing his hunting knife as the foliage parted.
A bleary, red-eyed Dylan Jordan held up both hands. "I surrender."
Jas sheathed his blade. "You almost got hurt there, Doc."
"Almost." The man snorted out a laugh. "Only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, isn't that what they used to say?"
Dallas groaned and rubbed his thumb and forefinger over his eyes. Whatever pills the man popped like candy didn't do a damn thing to fix the fact that he was fucknuts crazy. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Both of his eyebrows shot up. "Lex told me to meet her. When I saw you over here, I figured you were in on it."
"Lex told you to meet her here?" Dallas echoed, his brain struggling to process the words.
His body moved.
Dodging Jasper's attempt to grab him, he snatched up a gun and jammed it under Doc's chin, adrenaline and fear graying out the edges of the world. "How long ago? How fucking long ago?"
He didn't flinch. "This afternoon. She said it was a pickup--a girl who needed help to detox."
Which meant she'd known almost as long as he had, and had made her own choices about what to do with the information. Just imagining what that choice was likely to be--
Dallas bit off a curse as he shoved Doc to the side and whirled to snarl at Jasper, who was blocking his path. "I will go through you."
"No, you won't." Jas glanced at his watch. "Not for thirty more seconds."
Thirty seconds of knowing Lex was trapped inside with a monster and his guards. Thirty seconds of wondering what she'd had to sacrifice to get there, what she'd endured because Dallas hadn't found a way to finish this bastard off weeks ago.
Thirty seconds of rage that she would willingly walk into a trap he'd helped to set, knowing it could spring shut on her. Christ, they were in Sector Five. How many ways could Fleming administer drugs? They could be in the water, in the food, in the fucking air.
"I'm going to strangle her," he growled, shaking with the effort it took to restrain himself. Raising an alarm could get her dead, but he wanted her in his arms now, so he could examine every goddamn inch of her for the slightest injury and then skin whoever had put it there.
Slowly.
"No one would blame you." Jasper held out his pistol, butt first, offering it to the doctor. "Ten seconds, and you're gonna make yourself useful."
"I'm not stupid." Jordan pulled a semiautomatic from the small of his back. "I don't wander around unarmed."
Dallas barely heard them. He was a rubber band stretched too tight, seconds from shooting forward or snapping back on the idiots trying to hold him in place. Clutching his gun in one hand, he rested the other on the hilt of his knife.
Eight...seven...
Lex was in there. His heart was in there.
Five...
He needed to tell her that.
Three...two...
God, let her still be alive to tell.
"One," he growled, and started running.
Doc and Jasper kept pace with him as he raced across the open area. They found proof of Cruz and Bren's handiwork as soon as they cleared the edge of the building. Two men lay dead, and a third leaned over them, his fingers pressed to one bloody neck as if seeking a pulse.
He was still reaching for his gun when Dallas slit his throat.
True to Bren's promise, most of the guards were down, and they only ran into stragglers as they followed Cerys's directions through the labyrinthine halls. Dallas plowed through them, Jasper at his side. One guard, two, four--
They rounded a corner, but the man at the other end wasn't a guard. He was too damn old, for one, though he held a gun in both shaking hands.
"Drop it," Jasp
er ordered flatly.
The old man's hands wavered as he stared at Jasper's wrists. A moment later, the gun clattered to the floor. "She had those," he said in a shaking voice, pointing to Jas's cuffs. "Lady Jade's friend. Are you here for her?"
The name meant nothing to Dallas, but it wasn't hard to guess that this was the driver from Two. "You picked up a woman tonight?"
He nodded and edged carefully to the side, both hands held upright. "A friend of the lady's, she was."
"And she's through here?" Dallas gestured to the huge double doors.
Another nod.
He couldn't hear anything on the other side. No sounds of fighting or fucking, just a chilling sort of silence that could mean anything or nothing. For all he knew, the damn room was soundproofed so no one would know what Fleming's high rollers got up to on the other side.
Only one way to find out. Dallas passed his knife to Doc and pulled his favorite pistol. "On three?"
Jasper counted it off under his breath, then splintered the door's latch with one solid kick. Lifting his weapon, Dallas spilled into the room only to freeze three steps later.
A gigantic man he vaguely recognized was holding a gun to Lex's head. Finn, a silent, severe hulk who ran drugs for Mac Fleming.
Beyond that, all Dallas could register was the blood. It covered Lex, slicking her skin and drenching the ruffled white negligee she wore. His heart seized until he realized there was too much blood for her to be sitting upright, tense and alert and noticeably fuming.
Not hers, then. A brief glance at the woman sprawled beside her made it clear it wasn't hers, either. Her white gown was splattered, but her worst injuries seemed to be the vivid red marks around her throat.
As if he could read Dallas's thoughts, Finn sighed. "If this woman belongs to you, she's been busy," he said, gesturing briefly with the gun. Dallas looked to the left and saw Woods sprawled on his back, glassy-eyed, with a giant shard of glass sticking out of his throat.
"He had it coming," Lex spat.
"No argument here, dollface." Finn dug through his pocket without taking his eyes off Dallas and came up with a bent cigarette. "But you put me between a rock and a real damn hard place. Also known as my boss and yours."
